Much better to use the EQ pedal as a volume cut. Turn it off for solos.

What is the cab?
Is it worth the bother?
Consider buying a used cab complete with the speakers you want.
A Victory 4x12 with V30’s would be about £400.

You should ditch this ‘band’.
Put the feelers out, and select people you can work with on all levels.

I played in a hippy band in Wales in the early 80’s. We had a set of our own songs and some covers. I lived with the husband/wife drums/keyboards. We’d jammed some Rush as a 3-piece, and it looked ...

Take a 5 minute break every hour!

Neck relief is the biggest problem for most.

Most of my playing is through a Koko Boost into a full-gain valve amp.
I use it to give +6dB of mids, and a tiny boost.
Very rarely I will turn it off for clean rhythm playing.

For all round performance - the Strymon Blue Sky.

Mine was a Japanese Fuzz/Wah from the late 60’s. Linear Conchord amp. Shaftesbury Rickenbacker guitar.
Soon swapped that for a real Arbiter Fuzz Face and a Vox Wah. Marshall stack. Fender Strat.
Echoplex came next, and I never looked back.

Biggest hurdle is to train the ears to listen ‘flat’.
Go out in the woods, and just sit and listen.
None of those vibrant sounds have EQ on them.
After an hour you will hear incredible detail.
Now, in the midst of all that, imagine your guitar playing over the top of it.
I will tell you now that ...

A 1x12 might be ok for practice and recording, but a semi-open 2x12 is really the bare minimum for gigging.
Also, keep your drummer under tighter control.
Devote one rehearsal to band dynamics and volume levels, and then stick to it.

Compare a so called Luthier, with his steel rulers, protractors, and feeler-gauges - with someone who has lived with that guitar for 40 years, and knows it inside out.
With that in mind, then whatever your stage of development - it would be wise to nurture the skills to at least analyse your ...

A £2m ‘59 Les Paul would not make me get out of bed. But neither would a £100 Yamaha Pacifica.
Just choose the best instrument that can fulfil your needs, at the price you can afford.
There’s never a situation in which you couldn’t throw another month’s wages at an intended purchase, and get what ...

Everything stems from your relationship with your guitar, when playing direct into a responsive amp.
You might need some front-end boost maybe, and some delay and reverb for ambience.
But all guitarists should have this ‘core sound’ nailed down tight.

Owning a decent channel strip is a good idea.
A single rack with a mic pre-amp, compressor, and some EQ. A Focusrite Platinum is cheap.
You will want an audio interface for your computer. One with very low latency. Motu M2 is faultless.
Now you can mic a cabinet, or go DI into the channel strip ...

We develop an affinity to working with the response of a valve amp at it’s limit. This is a hard-won exercise.
You owe it to yourself to buy a quality attenuator if you wish to approach practice at bedroom levels.
That’s not to say that you can’t learn a lot by playing unplugged with a metronome ...

Understanding that I was a unique entity.
This was the key to my subsequent musical endeavours.
Everything then fell into place.
I was no longer the guy playing Jimi Hendrix’s guitar through Warren Cuccurullo’s rack, into Steve Vai’s Marshalls.
Now I play my guitar, through my amp, and sound like me.

Understanding the sound that comes from the guitar is most important.
In my world, I would seek an amp that has both gain but also linearity, in that it can respond and relate to all the frequencies it is given. Some amps have wonderful complexity in the mids, others are more lifeless.
So, I would ...

I lay ground rules.
Never use a guitar volume pot above 8.
Humbuckers need the tone control never above 7.
Then I set up my gainiest lead tone on my amp, using mids and slight boost from a Koko Boost pedal.
For rhythm work, I now have the complete range from 1-6 on the guitar, and can switch off the ...

Allan Holdsworth.
Yngwie Malmsteen.
Eddie Van Halen.
Robin Trower.
Jeff Beck.
Jimi Hendrix.
Frank Zappa.
Joe Walsh.
Paul Kossoff.
Steve Vai.
And most others you’d care to mention.
They all used pre-amps/overdrives into the front-end of a Marshall amp.
A lot of them were using pretty much stock, off ...

I went to one Open Mike night in my local pub.
How was I to know it was an Amateur Autopsy Society’s meeting!

I don’t believe the immediacy of a responsive valve amp will ever be equalled by a digitally-interfacing product.

I must also stress the importance of the speaker resonating the guitar - so it becomes a living, breathing thing in your hands.

I tune a guitar to where it’s happy, then just go for it.
There are no rules.
The ultimate is to be removed mentally from proceedings.
The music will write itself.

In the music you compose, you are developing your identity, and announcing yourself to the world.
There are no rules. Only a mix of your perception and capability.
In order to expand your ‘vocabulary’, try listening to your inner voice.
Don’t reject simplicity - but don’t aim to resolve sequences ...

Sometimes it’s easy. Some makers are quite comprehensive in providing a good selection of speaker output sockets of different impedances. For instance, the simple Victory Baron combo has an 8ohm speaker and an 8ohm output. There are also two sockets for combined 8ohm speakers, if you wished to use ...